Let the Cycling Begin…

Day 1 of the cycle happened to be my birthday (31st October). We eventually left Basel in a taxi big enough to take our bikes and kit (we had waited over an hour for him to turn up, in the meantime 2 cabbies had turned up for us in mercs, even though we explicitly said we had 2 bikes..DOH! Anyhow, the 30min cab ride cost us ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY EUROS. Can I just say Switzerland is a thieving place everything is uber expensive, but that cab ride took the piss. Anyhow, we got dropped off a Pfetterhouse – the southernly point of the Western Front, and started pedalling…The little villages we passed through were beautiful, however the all seemed to be set in small valleys, which meant lots of hills! Luckily there were enough down hills to compensate for the uphills so it wasnt too bad.

Before we knew it we had knocked off a fair few towns and were feeling very good about things, Thann came and went – we decided to push on a little further than previously planned because we had made good time. We eventually got ourselves to a small village called Fellering. Our hotel was up the biggest, steepest hill I had every seen. It was 3miles long this hill and we had to walk it – it was impossible to cycle, especially after 40 odd miles. At every corner I was pleading that the hotel was in sight, but it was not to be. It took over an hour to get there up this hill…but we got there. A beautiful place surrounded by forest – absolutely in the middle of nowhere. The landlady cooked us chicken and rice and home made soup which did the trick just nicely…and we went to bed content that 43 miles had been knocked off in the first day…